Balance Dump

[[GR]dEph_]

Random thought here. Ra's passive Ashes to Ashes at lvl1 gives +1 Health Regeneration. Granted you don't get the +dmg or +hp but that would take about +33 strength. That seems high at such a low level considering you get the +atkspd and aoe dmg.

[[LsE]Benny0]

Empath gives that globally at level 1, and Knight Davion's Passive gives 2 hp at level 1, as well as 2 armor. I really don't think Ashes to Ashes at low levels is the problem with Ra. I think it's Ashes to Ashes + the melee regen buff...

[Anakha]

HP regeneration through strength gain is a fairly bad comparison to make, since FWS itself only gives 0.9 hp regen through its str attribute, and flat regen (trinket of resto) is 350g for +2.
A better comparison will always be to flat regen, since Ra only buys mostly flat HP and HP regen rather than strength.
+1 from ashes and +1 base melee regen is effectively +2, so you've got 350g of free benefits there.

Now compare this to Tremble's mounds at level 1, which are the equivalent of thousands of gold in benefits.


As for Nome's design philosophy:
"There exists an overemphasis placed upon the picking phase; that is to say, your hero picks represent a disproportionate contributor to the result of a match versus how well the heroes are actually played and strategies are executed."

So wrong in so many ways.

[Anakha]

<pewpewstar> YES
<pewpewstar> I'M ALIVE
<pewpewstar> THANKS TO THE AIRPORT SHUTTING DOWN
<pewpewstar> WHICH DELAYED THE PARCEL
<pewpewstar> WHICH ENABLED ME TO RECALL IT
<pewpewstar> YEEEAAAAAAAAAA

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

[skeloperch]

HP regeneration through strength gain is a fairly bad comparison to make, since FWS itself only gives 0.9 hp regen through its str attribute, and flat regen (trinket of resto) is 350g for +2.
A better comparison will always be to flat regen, since Ra only buys mostly flat HP and HP regen rather than strength.
+1 from ashes and +1 base melee regen is effectively +2, so you've got 350g of free benefits there.

Now compare this to Tremble's mounds at level 1, which are the equivalent of thousands of gold in benefits.


As for Nome's design philosophy:
"There exists an overemphasis placed upon the picking phase; that is to say, your hero picks represent a disproportionate contributor to the result of a match versus how well the heroes are actually played and strategies are executed."

So wrong in so many ways.

I would agree with Nome. Hero picks are vital to how the game goes. A team of is gonna fall flat, while a team of will own face. It's true that good players could beat team 2 with team 1, but, assuming equal skill level, team 2 will always win, because it is a setup that has a balance of roles. This is at least what I interpret out of what Nome is saying.

Anyways, how do we buff DW to be more viable? Is he already viable, just extremely niche? Is there a way to buff him so that he isn't OP in pubs or comp play, and yet he is still worth picking over Pebbles/Tundra/Midas?

[Anakha]

I'm not debating that picking isn't influential. He's saying in that article that it shouldn't be as influential as it is, which is rubbish. You don't get to pick 5 farm dependent melee heroes and win a game now, and you shouldn't ever be allowed to do that - reducing the emphasis on the picking phase reduces the depth of the game tremendously on a strategical level (which we are seeing now).

[[LsE]Hsssh]

If your picks don't matter much then it's easier to play well with them and execute your strategy. In short it dumps down the game on every front.

This reminds me LoL a bit, i remember when playing 5 melee against 5 ranged i never felt that we were ****ed in the laning phase and got kinda decent farm. Of course i never bothered to get to ranked games there so maybe things change at some point.

[changlingbob]

The LoL picking phase is nice and straight forward though; a jungler, an AD carry to solo short, an AP carry to solo mid, a carry and a support for the long lane. As long as you know which champion is which, you can't go wrong! Of course, this means there's precisely one viable strategy, and the champions that are less good at a specific role are actually useless, as they don't have niche uses (barring a couple of exceptions).

So its possible to make the picking phase less influential, but why would you ever want to?

E: Details may not quite be right, as I don't play straight up LoL because see conclusion above. Dominion is good fun though.

[GregerMoek]

Kinda dull to only see the same thing all the time, I mean because the spells are not as powerful in LoL compared to HoN trilanes, 2 vs 1 and stuff like that are harder to execute and AFAIK there are barely any benefits from doing that.

I must admit I haven't played LoL much so basically there might be some hero there who's like Andro with a super-strong stun at level 1, I doubt it though.

[Anakha]

LoL has no real way of controlling your opponent's income from 0:00 so it just becomes an economy race for the first 20min.

[skeloperch]

Meh. I play LoL semi-decently in ranked. My nub friends still wonder why I'm better than them when they play LoL 10x as much as me.

Basically, strategies evolve in LoL, but the main setup is: a jungler, a tanky dps to solo sidelane, a support, a 'tank' and either another AP or AD, depending on what you're lacking. Roaming in LoL is null, because all that matters is damage because of a little thing called tenacity. There are champions that have strong stuns at level one, but tenacity prevents them from staying low leveled. The stat reduces the duration of all debuffs, and stacks with natural tenacity some champions get (Irelia has a passive that gives you 10/25/40% tenacity based on how many enemies are around you, which completely stacks with Mercury Treads to give you something like 70% reduced duration of debuffs). The picking phase is dull; only a few champions in every 'role' are viable. Do we want the game to be like LoL?

[[IaF]Skyve]

I'm not debating that picking isn't influential. He's saying in that article that it shouldn't be as influential as it is, which is rubbish. You don't get to pick 5 farm dependent melee heroes and win a game now, and you shouldn't ever be allowed to do that - reducing the emphasis on the picking phase reduces the depth of the game tremendously on a strategical level (which we are seeing now).

Well, yes and no. I'm pretty sure that his idea wasn't to make 5 melee hardcarries viable, but rather to make "5 melee hardcarries" non-existent, by making every hero a somewhat "hybrid" between multiple/every role.
The problem is that you can't do that with HoN, instead it takes a new game to do that, because HoN already has it's basic "set of rules" established.

Although I wouldn't mind if a team of 5 melees would be as viable as a team of 5 ranged heroes.
:P

[TRYTROUSERS]

I think S2 painted themselves into a corner when they gave too much lane control to the popular hard supports like plague and slither. I know we are supposed to talk about the game on a competitive level, but it's really not fun to sit down and play one game of hon, pick a melee hero you actually enjoy, and have some random dude 100 - 0 attack walk you out of the lane without taking a single hit from the creeps.

Supports are always going to be viable just because of their click stuns and low income requirement, but letting them do the equivalent of a drow ranger orb walk was just too much. Pub games were being won and lost simply because one team had a guy who was willing to be that turbonerd who instant locks in the plague rider and gaurantees EZ farm to his lane by right clicking and hitting Q when its up.

The end result was that melee heros were basically pigeonholed into a very small amount of lane configurations that almost always required someone else to play a hard support for you, or to stick them in the middle lane. So what does S2 do, make the creeps more responsive? Nah, let's just release melee heros whose abilities are so ridiculous that they can start to carry with a set of red boots and a vanguard. After that things just started to spiral out of control and it seemed like every hero was being released with the mindset that the hero should be able to be played solo, as if the game was Call of Duty in Newerth.

[[SIRS]Nine_Cloak]

Jeraziah, Plague Rider, Kraken, Predator are all broken in as many ways as you can possibly imagine.

MMR system is broken.

Fayde's little strong.

Chronos and Sand Wraith need beneficial changes.

I think S2 painted themselves into a corner when they gave too much lane control to the popular hard supports like plague and slither. I know we are supposed to talk about the game on a competitive level, but it's really not fun to sit down and play one game of hon, pick a melee hero you actually enjoy, and have some random dude 100 - 0 attack walk you out of the lane without taking a single hit from the creeps.

Supports are always going to be viable just because of their click stuns and low income requirement, but letting them do the equivalent of a drow ranger orb walk was just too much. Pub games were being won and lost simply because one team had a guy who was willing to be that turbonerd who instant locks in the plague rider and gaurantees EZ farm to his lane by right clicking and hitting Q when its up.

The end result was that melee heros were basically pigeonholed into a very small amount of lane configurations that almost always required someone else to play a hard support for you, or to stick them in the middle lane. So what does S2 do, make the creeps more responsive? Nah, let's just release melee heros whose abilities are so ridiculous that they can start to carry with a set of red boots and a vanguard. After that things just started to spiral out of control and it seemed like every hero was being released with the mindset that the hero should be able to be played solo, as if the game was Call of Duty in Newerth.

Also, this x4000

[[LsE]Hsssh]

I think S2 painted themselves into a corner when they gave too much lane control to the popular hard supports like plague and slither. I know we are supposed to talk about the game on a competitive level, but it's really not fun to sit down and play one game of hon, pick a melee hero you actually enjoy, and have some random dude 100 - 0 attack walk you out of the lane without taking a single hit from the creeps.

Aren't they stronger in Dota?

[Anakha]

Lane control means a lot less in DotA than it does in HoN, as heroes don't ramp up as quickly as they do in HoN. Having said that, he's grossly exaggerating.

[[GR]XFlame]

So, is Magic Vestments way too good for its cost, or is it because too many viable heroes deal magic damage atm?

[Anakha]

Both?

[GregerMoek]

While that might be the case I don't think that Shaman's headress is too cost efficient, mayhaps it has become stronger now when all the nukers of Newerth arrived, but still.

I guess that in a way this promotes even more the "tank-carry" pickups, as they are the ones most likely going for such items anyways and also being able to endure some spanking and burst.

Edit: However just picking up a Mystic vestments often means your hero got pretty much for the gold spent, won't really say that's not true.

[[IaF]Skyve]

So, is Magic Vestments way too good for its cost, or is it because too many viable heroes deal magic damage atm?

Most items that you more or less should pick up every game can be argued to be too good.

Vestments, Mana Battery/Power Supply, Boots (+Steamboots/Ghost Marchers), Sheepsticks, HotBL are definitely in spots that might require some rethinking.